


trying to rid you from my bones

by thatsparrow



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 01, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 16:10:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20530829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: In the months after, he stops drinking Irish whiskey. The first time that Polly heard him ordering Scotch, she'd said, "What—do you think she has her hand in every still in Ireland?""Tastes change, Poll."





	trying to rid you from my bones

**Author's Note:**

> set post-s1, pre-s2
> 
> title from "the engine driver" by the decemberists

In the months after, he stops drinking Irish whiskey. The first time that Polly heard him ordering Scotch, she'd said, "What—do you think she has her hand in every still in Ireland?"

"Tastes change, Poll."

"Yeah, but you don't." Polly had leaned in, her hand catching his arm while the glass was still halfway to his mouth. "You don't have to let her take your choice of liquor along with everything else."

He'd shaken off her grip and downed the last of the Scotch, holding it for an extra moment on his tongue before letting it roll down his throat, bitter-tasting even for the honey. Said through the lingering sting, "Nobody's taken anything from me."

"Right. I suppose _ nobody _ is the same reason why Harry's yet to hire a new barmaid."

"He can hire whomever he likes. It's his own thinking that says he needs my blessing first."

Polly had shaken her head at him. "You know, I hope you at least manage to convince yourself with all those pretty words. Heaven knows that they've not yet persuaded the rest of us."

_ Irish _ isn't the only flavor of whiskey, just as it isn't the only flavor of woman. Polly had said there would be others, and in the months after, Tommy takes care to prove her right. Lizzie Stark had never been alone in her willingness to take him to bed—of either men or women, paid or not—and, in the months after, Tommy indulges those interested parties. Never to the point of recklessness, though—never with any less precision than what he uses to steer his straight-edge over the lathered curve of his neck—but often enough that he sometimes treads the line of indiscretion, sometimes toeing over its edge. No matter. There's always enough money to fill in the gaps.

"You think I look like some kind of whore?" One of the women had said after he'd counted out a handful of bills onto her dresser. She had, actually, with the fraying strap of her slip sliding low off one of her bird-thin shoulders, but that wasn't why he'd gone for his wallet. No, it was because she'd proved to be chatty—too loud when he was fucking her, and too talkative after. 

"I'm not interested in buying your cunt," he'd said, buttoning up his vest. "Just your silence."

She'd frowned, her mouth pulled into a narrow line as she'd folded the bills into her drawer. For all her offense when he'd first reached for his money, she clearly wouldn't have balked at more of it. A pity for her; what he'd given was already more than she would've been worth. Still, at least she'd demonstrated enough sense to hold back whatever extra words were waiting on her tongue.

Some nights are better than others—there's a man he goes back to more than once who's particularly talented with his mouth, and a dark-eyed woman who works the knotted aches out of his muscles after they've finished—but for the most part, it's performance. Perfunctory. An easy and not-altogether-unpleasant routine that keeps Polly from looking at him sideways, like he's as fragile as some pulled-pin grenade whenever a woman with sun-colored hair walks through the Garrison. It chafes at him, that uniquely Polly-mix of pity and vindication, and so to keep her looks and her judgments at bay, he plays the part she expects of him. Papers over the Grace-shaped hole in his life with a nameless litany of Birmingham men and women. For a time, it works; when he next orders Scotch, she stays quiet. The third time, she joins him for a toast.

"I told you there would be others."

"As usual, Poll, you were right."

But even though there is no shortage of those willing to keep him company at night, there are none he wants to stay with through to the morning. He is never wanting for warm bodies with which to fill the emptiness on the right side of the bed, but when he sleeps, he still hears the shovels chipping through the plaster behind the bedroom wall. It was only ever Grace who had managed to quiet them.

And so, privately, he keep the ragged-edged wound of her absence open. Picks at the scab in his mind just enough to keep it from ever healing properly. He doesn't turn the memories rose-colored—he's not so foolish as to forget she'd carved him open for Campbell's killing with her left hand even as she'd reached for his heart with her right—but he does permit himself to remember. The evenings when he's having trouble sleeping, he lets himself return to the narrowness of her apartment, the lace curtains colored like morning fog. He remembers her hand on his shoulder as they'd danced to the silence of the broken gramophone, her fingers moving across the puckered, bullet-shaped divots in his chest, her palms anchored at his hips, her nails looking for purchase in the planes of his back. Remembers her sweat-slicked forehead resting against the juncture of his neck, her thighs tensing up around him as she came.

He believes that she loved him—maybe loves him still—and so he lets himself remember her. But it was also her words that had led to Billy Kimber's bullet in Danny's chest, and so he doesn't allow himself to love her in return. Instead, he keeps the wound open. Sterilizes it with Scotch.


End file.
